keopi has the core of it. Think of it this way - how much do you think the photographers of the photos on /r/gentlemanboners are getting paid for those imgur links? The answer is, of course, a big fat goose egg. Every picture on the internet was taken by someone. When it comes to high quality photos, odds are that the person who took that photo makes a living at it (or uses it as supplementary income). If you're reposting that picture without permission, you are - under the law - using their intellectual property without permission, which is illegal in most western societies. This is one of the reasons that digital content is so undervalued in comparison to physical content - It's so easily replicable at an identical quality that it makes it almost valueless. And of course, we can't rely on people to not replicate, because people want pretty stuff, but don't want to play for it. We're like the people of Mozart's Vienna - "Generous with their praise, but not with their wallets"